1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a search service technology using a communication network such as the Internet and, more particularly, to an analogous query extracting system and method capable of providing correlated analogous queries to a user by using log information of a user device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a normal search service using a communication network such as the Internet, when a user enters a search query, a search engine searches websites, news, documents, etc., containing the search query therein or multimedia contents, such as images and videos containing the search query as their file names. This search result is then returned to the user in response to user's search query.
Recently, in order for users to more quickly and exactly find their desired information, a related search service that extracts search queries related to a search query inputted from a user and then returns them to the user has been provided. Normally, search results depend on search queries inputted by a user. For example, a search result obtained in response to an input “car” may be different from that obtained in response to another input “automobile” or “vehicle”. Hence, users try to input a more highly related search query so as to obtain desired information, but it is not easy for users to hit on such search queries. Therefore, a recent search service offers, to users, related search queries in connection with user's search query input such that users can perform a search by using related search queries.
Meanwhile, in a conventional related search service, a service operator sorts related search queries one by one with regard to each search query and stores them in advance. Unfortunately, this causes temporal and financial burdens. Particularly, this conventional service is based on a way of collecting search queries inputted subsequently to a specific search query inputted by a user group and then finding a correlation between collected search queries regardless of users.
The above way is performed on the assumption that users already know suitable search queries for a search target. Thus, a conventional search service merely offers extended search keywords related to user's search query. Namely, a conventional search service collects search queries that contain user's search query itself or its synonym, and then provides them as related search keywords to a user.
Therefore, a conventional search service not only fails to provide related search keywords when a user does not know suitable search queries for a search target, but also fails to provide other search queries which contain neither user's search query nor synonym but have similar attributes. Hence, required is a more enhanced search query extracting method that can effectively collect data associated with a search query inputted from a user, exactly determine correlation between search queries on the basis of collected data, and thereby provide other search queries which are similar in attribute to user's search query.